


Distant Shore

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2035254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s in the room with the body, but she can’t just leave him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distant Shore

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by chickendipz on Tumblr: A small goodbye on Thane's deathbed, followed by a written version of Kolyat handing Shepard the messages and her starting up the first one.

She’s in the room with the body, but she can’t just leave him.

Kolyat left, she thinks, but neither he nor the doctors asked her to go. Someone came in and stitched up her arm a while ago. She remembers that. She was dripping blood, so gently, on the floor. She remembers Thane’s eyes watching it fall as he gasped for breath, concern knitting his features.

He was drowning, but he was worried about her little scratch. A little scratch that demanded a few dozen stitches, but—still. Nothing, compared to being spaced.

Nothing, compared to this.

She looks at him. She remembers watching him sleep—a few nights in her apartment, when she returned to the Citadel and they could make time for each other; a few times on the Normandy, for the few months they had together after blowing the Collectors to hell. The shallow breaths as his chest rose and fell. The puffs of air escaping his delicate nose. He didn’t snore; he was as quiet in sleep as in combat.

He could be sleeping now, but he isn’t. His eyes are closed, his form still.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever move from this spot. If she just watches long enough, he’ll wake up. He’ll wake up, and she won’t have to go on fighting this war alone. He’ll wake up, she’ll bully him into a lung transplant, and they’ll grow old together when the Reapers are dead and buried. He’ll wake up, and they’ll get a second chance, just like she did.

So she sits, and she looks at him, but he doesn’t wake up.

The Citadel has gone dark—the night cycle in full effect—when a hand falls heavy on her shoulder. “Lola,” James says. So gently. She wants to kick his teeth in. She wants to give him two brilliant black eyes. She restrains herself, but only because she is so horribly, horribly tired. “They need the room.” He pats her shoulder, and she no longer wants to hurt him. “I’ll wait outside.”

When he’s gone, she rises to her feet. Her body aches, her muscles stiff with sitting and staring—and the aftermath of all the running and fighting, too. Without thinking about it, she touches the cool chain at her throat and pulls it over her head. Her dog tags clink, familiar music she doesn’t care for anymore.

She has never wanted so desperately to be dead. Not to die, but just to be done. She’ll keep that thought to herself, right up to the end.

Gently, she loops the chain around his neck. Her imagination carries her away for a vivid, terrible second; his eyes open, his hand snaps up to seize her wrist.  _Did you think I couldn’t joke, siha?_  he teases, his lips quirked in his little smirk, but when she comes back to herself, he isn’t looking at her.

He will never look at her again.

Shaking now, she leans down. He smells like the medication they filled him with, the faint odor of hospitals and death. He doesn’t smell like the man who woke her up. She still presses a kiss to his forehead, because it’s her last chance, no matter how morbid that is.

"Please," she whispers—a last, selfish goodbye. "Don’t let me drown."

She gets as drunk as she’s ever been, throws up on Garrus, lets him prop her up in her shower and cry every last drop of moisture from her body—and the next day she gets up like nothing’s happened, goes on like nothing’s changed.

It’s the worst lie she’s ever told, but the reapers will not wait for her to grieve.

A week later, she puts the war on pause anyway. She tells herself that it’s for Kolyat’s sake, but really, it’s selfish. She wants to give the assassin who thought he would die in anonymity a proper send-off.

Kolyat’s face is soft with sympathy, and she is undeserving. Surely he has more to grieve. He lost his father, not once, but twice. That seems so much more terrible than the lot of the left-behind girlfriend, the woman who knew him for only a year.

The woman who left him for six months, to stand on ceremony and allow herself to be held prisoner while he slowly used up all the time he had left.

"I sent them to your extranet address," Kolyat tells her. "I hope they help more than they hurt."

His fingers twitch, as though he’s considering reaching out to her—to comfort her—but he decides against it. She doesn’t blame him. She feels as though she would fracture at a single touch; she must look it, too. Instead, he shakes her hand. His eyes search hers, as though imparting some last message that she can’t read, and then he lets her go, turning away to speak to the councilor.

She doesn’t wait for their chat to end. They don’t need her to see themselves out. She takes the stairs to her bedroom—Thane slept here, a handful of times, brief and happy memories standing out like stars in a sea of doubt and fear—and brings up the messages.

"Siha," he greets her. She pauses the vid right there, backs away to sit on the bed, and looks her fill, tears already pricking her eyes.

She isn’t sure she’ll make it through all of them. She isn’t sure she’ll make it past this moment right here, with his endearment for her still on his lips, with light still in his eyes. But it doesn’t matter. His voice echoes with the name he gave her, and for the first time since the Collector base, a measure of calm steals into her veins.

She will see this war through to the end. And when it ends, he’ll pull her safely to shore.

Her fingers tremble, but she presses  _play_.


End file.
